Durational effects of boundaries in Italian fricatives

Ioana Chitoran (1, 2) , Hiyon Yoo (3, 2) , Giuseppina Turco (3, 4)

1 CLILLAC-ARP (URP_3967) - Centre de Linguistique Inter-langues, de Lexicologie, de Linguistique Anglaise et de Corpus
2 UPCité UFR Linguistique - Université Paris Cité - UFR Linguistique [Sociétés et Humanités]
3 LLF - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle
4 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

We examine durational effects in Italian word-initial fricatives-singleton [f], [s] and fricatives in the clusters [fr], [sp], [sk]-as a function of two positional factors: position with respect to stress (including the context of raddoppiamento sintattico-RS) and position relative to an Intonational phrase (IP) boundary. Results show that word-initial fricatives are longer the closer they are to the main stress syllable of the preceding word, in keeping with RS. Fricatives are shorter in IP-initial position than in non-IP-Initial, in keeping with increased consonanticity in domain-initial position. An interaction between the two factors shows that word-initial fricatives lengthen only when non-IP-initial, confirming the fact that RS is blocked in the presence of an IP boundary. We discuss the implications of the results for the linguistic use of segmental duration.

Keywords: fricative duration; raddoppiamento sintattico; cluster; initial boundary; stress

Domains: Cognitive science; Linguistics

Ioana Chitoran, Hiyon Yoo, Giuseppina Turco. Durational effects of boundaries in Italian fricatives. International Seminar on Speech Production (ISSP 2020), Dec 2020, New Haven, CT, United States. pp.118 - 121. ⟨hal-03431859⟩